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New Year, New Promotion

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So 2012 has begun, and to celebrate, I'm giving away two e-books on Kindle. For the next several days, you can download The Dishonored Dead and No Shelter for free. That's right -- FREE.

US Kindle / UK Kindle

US Kindle / UK Kindle

So if you haven't checked these out (and even if you have), please download them and help spread the word. Even if you don't have a Kindle, there are plenty of apps to read on practically any device. Enjoy!

P.S. My friend Adam Perry's children's book Mister Ray is currently free too. Download it!

A Look Back At 2011, The Numbers Edition

It's almost the end of 2011, which means that 2012 is right around the corner, which means the ancient Mayans are going to come back from the dead and eat us all. That's how the prophecy goes, right?

Anyway, instead of doing a rambling post about this past year, I thought I would just share my e-book numbers for the year, split up by each month. I find it's interesting stuff, looking at the progression (I'm a nerd like that). Granted, these past two months have been great for sales, which no doubt is thanks to the holidays.

(Note that I'm also not including the free downloads for The Silver Ring and In the Land of the Blind, which number over 30,000. Also note that these are for Kindle and Nook; Sony and iBooks and Smashwords only gave me a handful more, but wasn't worth my time adding up for each month as Smashwords' spreadsheets can be tricky. Also note the bump in sales come June; that was after The Silver Ring finished its free promotion and, surprisingly, kept selling like hotcakes. And finally, note that there are still two full days left in December, so the numbers listed are as of right now.)

  • January: 13
  • February: 13
  • March: 81
  • April: 232
  • May: 793
  • June: 1,858
  • July: 1,054
  • August: 1,272
  • September: 1,166
  • October: 1,244
  • November: 1,661
  • December: 2,102

For the year, I've sold nearly 11,500 e-books. My bestsellers were, hands down, The Serial Killer's Wife (3,175) and The Calling (3,663). My best 99 center, besides The Silver Ring (2,534), was Spooky Nook (671), which really picked up there near the end of the year.

What can we learn from this?

Who knows.

People have told me that the e-book bubble will burst soon, and maybe it will, though I don't think so. It's clear that e-books is where the future of publishing is headed. Print books will always be around, but e-books will definitely begin to dominate the marketplace. And of course, in terms of sales, what goes up must come down ... and eventually (hopefully) go back up. I have more books that I plan to release this year (about five or six), and if I've learned one thing this past year, it's the more books, the better.

Actually, let me rephrase that.

The more quality books, the better.

Great cover art, great product description -- they're both very important, but if you don't have a quality book to sell, readers will quickly sniff it out and sales will drop.

So will my sales progress throughout 2012? I certainly hope so. But there's really no way of telling.

The only thing I can say for sure is that 2011 was a pretty good year.

Here's hoping 2012 will be even better.

Some Books I Really Enjoyed In 2011

I read sixty books in 2011, counting novels and short story collections and graphic novels and audiobooks (yes, I do count listening to a book the same as reading a book). I enjoyed many of those books. Below are the books that I really enjoyed, in no particular order except in which I read/listened to them. Novels:

  • BEAT THE REAPER by Josh Bazell
  • THE CARETAKER OF LORNE FIELD by Dave Zeltserman
  • SWAMPLANDIA! by Karen Russell
  • EVERY SHALLOW CUT by Tom Piccirilli
  • EMILY, ALONE by Stewart O’Nan
  • RUN by Blake Crouch
  • THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins
  • FUN AND GAMES by Duane Swierczynski
  • THE GROVE by John Rector
  • BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS by Kurt Vonnegut
  • READY PLAYER ONE by Ernest Cline
  • DEATH WISHING by Laura Ellen Scott
  • THE IMPERFECTIONISTS by Tom Rachman (under novels, but it's really a novel-in-stories)

Stories:

  • MAD TO LIVE by Randall Brown
  • STORIES FOR NIGHTTIME AND SOME FOR THE DAY by Ben Loory

Audiobooks:

  • THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN by Garth Stein, read by Christopher Evan Welch
  • 61 HOURS by Lee Child, read by Dick Hill
  • WORTH DYING FOR by Lee Child, read by Dick Hill
  • FEAST DAY OF FOOLS, by James Lee Burke, read by Will Patton

Nonfiction:

  • MICROSTYLE: THE ART OF WRITING LITTER by Christopher Johnson

(I'm also currently reading 11/22/63 by Stephen King, about only 200 pages in. It's good so far, and practically everyone who has read it says it's amazing, and while it might be, I won't prematurely add it to the list. Hopefully it will be on next year's list.)

Note: I also purposely made sure there were more male authors on this list so that it creates a big hoopla that will occupy people's minds for a few days and then dissipate as they become enraged at something else just as asinine. (Okay, not really.)

So how about you? What books did you read this year that you really enjoyed?